For the Literary Magazine.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

THE character of Oliver long exercised the historical talents of European writers. Some French academicians have drawn it with admirable refinement; Gregorio Leti amused with agreeable fictions; Raguenet tires with dry truths ; volumes on volumes have wearied English curiosity.

These writers would persuade us that he was an artful mixture of the politician and the hypocrite. A single anecdote lets us more into the genius of a man than this multiplicity of volumes. When with some select friends enjoying a convivial hour, a confidential servant enters, and announces a body "of the elect." "Tell them," says he, "we are seeking the Lord. These fools think," continues he, looking under the table," that I am seeking the Lord, while I am only seeking the corkscrew."

W.

For the Literary Magazine.

AUGUSTUS.

WE delight to attend Augustus from amid the embarrassing affairs of government, into his domestic recesses; to see him the preceptor of his son; to observe him at supper seated between Virgil and Horace; and to mark him, with exquisite wit, blot out one of his own tragedies. Virgil had the asthma, and Horace a fistula lachrymalis. When Augustus was placed between them he used to say, not unpoetically, "I am now between sighs and tears." This lover of the art aspired to become an artist; he wrote a tragedy called Ajax; but had the good sense to perceive, that, if born to be an emperor, he was not born to be a poet. One

day he effaced, with his sponge, the whole tragedy. When it was

enquired after, he wittily answered, "Ajax is dead; he has swallowed his sponge:" alluding to a mode of death practised by the Roman gladiators, who frequently in despair swallowed their sponges. These little anecdotes show the literary dispositions of Augustus, whom, perhaps, like some other great monarchs, system alone made a tyrant.

Politics alone compelled him to sanguinary measures. He would never enquire after the authors of certain papers which had been scattered in the senate, and loaded him with calumnies. When Tiberius wondered at his indifference, he answered, “You think like a young man. Let them speak ill of me; I know they can do me none." Does this conduct of Augustus indicate him to have delighted in the effusion of human blood? When he had attained power, he showed the most amiable disposition. It is said of him, in comparing the commencement of his reign with its close, it had been desirable that he had never been, or that he had never ceased to be emperor. Augustus is an eminent example of the force of the terrible genius of politics.

U.

For the Literary Magazine.

LOUIS XIV.

LOUIS XIV merits the love of posterity. The genius of his people, not his own, inspired him with his love of war. When this monarch is deprived of that false glory which his adulators have thrown around him, he will appear to advantage, placed in the softer light of those hours which he devoted to the society of the great men whom his splendid patronage had formed. Numerous anecdotes of this monarch are eternal testimonies of his intellectual powers and his fine taste. He loved the conversation of Boileau

OF some extraordinary minds it has been said, that their knowledge is attained by that sublime conception, which surveys at one glance the species, and becomes, as it were by intuition, familiar with the individual. A Shakespeare has certainly given the most forcible language and descriptions to characters and situations, which never passed

changed."

The eloquent Eikon Basilike strongly indicates that the inclinations of Charles were remote from tyranny. He was, indeed, firmly persuaded that a king had just pow. ers, of which it was as necessary to be careful as of the just rights of his people. Such was his conviction, that he preferred death to what he deemed ignominy.

Louis XVI, in a conversation about Rousseau, once said, that he wished it were possible to annihilate "Emilius;" because, in that book, the author attacks religion, disturbs the security of society, and the just subordination of citizens; it can only tend to render men unhappy. But the Social Contract has also a most dangerous tendency, observed a courtier. "As for that," he replied," it is very different. It only attacks the authority of sovereigns; that is a subject proper to discuss. There is much to be said; there is room for controversy."

Charles I lost his head because he was tenacious of his rights, and Louis XVI because he was ever prompt to yield them to his subjects. A striking proof this of the mad

VOL. V. NO. XXVIII.

nature we admire; but who dare imitate? We gain our knowledge by the slow accession of many facts; these we combine; and, thus combined, they form what we call experience. Rochefoucault, when he composed his Maxims, had ever some particular circumstance or particular individual before him. When he observed, that "It displays a great poverty of mind to have only one kind of genius," he drew this reflection from anecdotes of Boileau and Racine.

It was a happy thought of Amelot de la Houssaie to give an edition of these Maxims, illustrated by examples or anecdotes drawn from his tory. Had the author given us all the cases which suggested his Maxims, the work would have been infinitely more valuable and intelligible than it is. Houssaie has enforced some of these reflections in the following manner :

Rochefoucault observes, "In jealousy there is less love than selflove." Houssaie illustrates this by an anecdote taken from Tacitus. "Witness Rhadamistus, who threw his beloved wife into a river, that she might not fall into the hands of another."

6

The duke observes, "The art of setting off moderate qualifications steals esteem, and often gives more reputation than real merit." His commentator gives, on this observation, the following character from Tacitus: "Poppæus Sabinus, of moderate birth, obtained the consulship, and the honour of a triumph; and governed, for four and twenty years, the greatest provinces, without any extraordinary merit, being just capable of his employments, and in no manner above them."

I have been told of a more curious work of this kind, but have not seen it, written by an Englishman, long before Houssaie's time: Dallington's Aphorisms from Guiccardini, amplified with authorities, and exemplified with historie. London, 1613, folio.

The bulk of mankind, indeed, when facts present themselves to their view, are incapable of reflection. Ignorant of their utility, they only regard them as objects of idle amusement. Yet the science of human nature, like that of physics, was never perfected till vague theory was rejected for certain experiment. An Addison and a Bruyere accompany their reflections by characters; an anecdote with them informs us better than a whole essay of Seneca. Opinions are fallible, but not examples.

A writer elegantly declaims against the vanity of a poet; but when he judiciously gives a few of the innumerable instances of poeti cal vanity, we shall comprehend him with more certainty, and follow his reflections with the firm conviction of truth. Would he inform us that innumerable little follies are found in very great minds? Every opinion is disputable. But we are concerned when he tells us that sir Robert Walpole was ambitious of being a man of gallantry; and that another great minister, cardinal Richelieu, was not less ambitious of being thought a poet; while the one was as awkward in his compliments as the other in his verses. word, the wise Elizabeth was a co

In a

quet; Charles V terminated his ca. reer by watch-making; Racine believed himself a politician.

When an author gives a character which strikes by its singularity, an anecdote will serve to establish the truth of its existence. Thus the character of the astronomer in Rasselas, finely described by Johnson, is a character founded in nature. With a wonderful sublimity of genius, he believed himself invested with the power of regulating the seasons. Postel's lectures were attended by such crowds, that he was obliged to harangue his auditors at a window, the hall of the college at Paris not being sufficiently large to contain them; yet this man, otherwise so judicious, cherished the extravagant folly of believing himself endowed with a supernatural reason. He hoped to convert all the nations of the earth, and had ever in mind the scheme of an order, to be called the knights of Christ; and for this purpose associated with the jesuits, who expelled him when they found him no better than a madman.

For the Literary Magazine.

A SKETCH OF BASIL.

S.

From American Letters, lately published.

BASIL is a little old fashioned town, situated on both sides of the Rhine, which is here a boatable stream, descending with rapidity from the Rhætian Alps, along the winding vallies of the most romantic country upon earth. Curiosity impatiently demands a nearer view of the peculiar scenery of Switzerland; but we must first recruit our exhausted spirits; and we shall content ourselves for the present with overlooking the river from our apartment at the Three Kings, a capital inn, the dining room of which overhangs the green current of the Rhine, in such a manner that

those who are fond of fishing may enjoy their sport from the windows. There is nothing gay at Basil but this beautiful stream, and the wooden bridge which crosses it, enlivened with the necessary intercourse of the two quarters of the town: for the streets of Basil are unfrequented by the busy, and the chief amusement of the idle is to reconnoitre the silent avenues from projecting lattices, the use of which a stranger cannot immediately divine.

Amidst such congenial accompaniments you visit, with all the serenity of recollection, the lone church-yard that belonged to the convent of the friars predicant, when Basil was depopulated by the plague, during the session of the general council assembled here in 1431, at which were present the emperor Sigismund, the duke of Milan, and several other christian princes.

Some contemporary artist, struck with the awful visitation that swept away together the prince and the peasant, the cardinal and the capuchin, depicted, upon the gloomy walls, a dance of death, the original of the famous sketches of Holbein. In this dismal masquerade a hundred skeletons, whose distorted attitudes bespeak horrific mirth, lead up, in melancholy duet, the reluctant victims of the king of ter

rors.

It was here, by the light of flaring torches, in the court-yard of an antiquated hotel, that Maria Theresa (the only member of the immediate family of Louis XVI that was permitted to survive the revolution which hurled the monarch from his throne) was received by the imperial ambassador, who indignantly rejected the splendid outfit, with which the national assembly had thought proper to send away the daughter of their sovereign.

The public library preserves, with appropriate veneration, some portraits from the pencil of Holbein, a contemporary copy of the minutes of the council, and the letters of Erasmus written to his friend Amberbachius, when the cautious and

timid reformer had quitted Basil, on account of the religious or political disputes that disturbed his philosophic repose.

But the absurd custom of keeping the clocks an hour faster than the true time of day no longer puzzles the curiosity of travellers, who are become, in this age of innovations, equally indifferent, whether it originated from the indolence of the council, the vigilance of the magistrates, or the declination of the sun dial, which, not having been corrected at the reformation, the scrupulous municipality could never afterward be persuaded to reform.

For the Literary Magazine.

ON LITERARY BIOGRAPHY.

IN literary biography, a man of genius always finds something which relates to himself. In the history of his fellow students, a writer traces the effects of similar studies; he is warned by their failures, or animated by their progress. He discovers that, like himself, the sublimest geniuses have frequently stretched the bow without force, and without skill. He is not displeased to find that Pope composed an epic, a tragedy, and a comedy; that the two first were burnt, and the comedy damned. La Mothe was so sensibly afflicted by the unfortunate fate of his first dramatic essay, that he renounced society, and buried himself in the melancholy retreat of La Trappe.

It is pleasing to observe the first dawn of genius breaking on the mind. Sometimes a man of genius, in his first effusions, is so far from revealing his future powers, that, on the contrary, no reasonable hope can be formed of his success. In the violent struggle of his mind, he may give a wrong direction to his talents; as Swift, in two Pindaric odes, and Dryden by an elegy, which have been unfortunately preserved in their works. Sometimes he displays no